Unbreathed Memories (14 page)

I’d spent a restless night thinking about what I would say when I saw the doctor, but got up in the middle of the night and padded down to the basement to take another look at myself in the yellow bikini. Whatever it took, it was worth the price.

At Dr. Bergstrom’s the nurse ushered me into a small
office with comfortable chairs and a large TV set on a mahogany credenza. I was glad I didn’t have to undress. Dr. Bergstrom had done all the examining and clinical photography on a previous visit; today I was supposed to have made up my mind about options. At first she had recommended a saline implant that would be pumped up with water every week, gradually expanding the tightened skin across my chest until it had stretched far enough to remove and slip a permanent implant underneath. I wasn’t particularly comfortable with the idea of carrying a foreign object around in my body. With my luck, I’d no sooner get it installed than the FDA would outlaw whatever it was they were using in place of silicone these days. I asked to see the introductory video again; about halfway through I decided on a free TRAM flap procedure. They’d take a mound of tissue and skin from my abdomen and transplant it to my chest. Sounded like good news/good news to me. Lose a chunk of stomach flab and gain a breast. Afterward, they’d do a bit of touch-up and tattoo a nipple on. My son-in-law, Dante, would get a kick out of that. I had never made any secret of my dislike for the elaborate tattoos that snaked up and down his arms.

The videotape ended and began to rewind automatically. I stared at the blue screen for a while, trying to relax. Eventually Dr. Bergstrom breezed into the room, her pink lab coat flying. She flipped on an overhead light and perched on the corner of the credenza.

“Well, Hannah. Made up your mind, or do you still have questions?”

“No, I’ve decided to go for the TRAM flap thing.”

She sprang to her feet. “Wonderful! I know you won’t regret it for a minute.” She beamed. “Except for the few days immediately after surgery, when you’ll be a little sore.”

I favored her with a half smile. “You’ll prescribe something for that, I trust.”

“Of course.” She laid one hand on the doorknob and handed me my folder. “Take this to the receptionist and she’ll make all the final arrangements.”

I took the folder from her outstretched hand, but didn’t move to leave. “Doctor?”

“Yes?”

“I’ve made up my mind to do this, I really have, and I know that we blocked out the date on your calendar, but because of some pressing family matters … well, what would be the possibility of postponing it for a couple of months?”

“Cold feet, Hannah?” Her smile was sympathetic. “We
could
put it off, of course, but I have to attend a medical conference in Helsinki in three weeks. My calendar is full. If we don’t do it now, it will be months before I can reschedule.”

“When would be the earliest?”

“You’ll have to check with Cindy, but not until May or June, I should think.”

May or June. It took three to four weeks to recover from a TRAM flap procedure. This meant my new body wouldn’t be ready in time for the summer sailing season. My vanity genes kicked in and I shrugged. “Might as well get it over with!”

“Good girl!” She laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “You won’t be sorry. See you in two weeks.”

Out in the reception area, I pushed my folder through the glass window that separated the cashier from the patients. I wrote a check for the day’s visit, cringing at the amount, and hoped that Blue Cross/Blue Shield wouldn’t give me any grief about the claim. After I paid, the cashier directed me to Cindy, who handed me a preprinted
instruction sheet. On my way to the elevator, I scanned it. On Monday I’d stop taking aspirin because it thins the blood; a week later, I’d report to the hospital. Nothing for breakfast, the instructions said, not even black coffee. I pushed the elevator button. No coffee. Bummer. Maybe there was still time to change my mind.

I sat in the doctor’s parking lot with the engine running, turned the heat to high, and considered where to go next. If I turned right, I could go home, have a late lunch, and continue making cold calls to people who might or might not have been patients of Dr. Sturges’s. If I turned left, I could drive to Georgina’s, like I promised Daddy. Either way, I figured I was in for some abuse. People on the other end of the telephone can always hang up in your ear, but if I showed up on the doorstep at Georgina’s and rang the bell, I would be a little hard to ignore. I desperately needed to talk to my troubled and troublesome sister. If Dr. Sturges’s self-help group met at All Hallows, Georgina almost certainly would have been involved. And if so, she might be able to tell me a lot about the other patients.

I turned left.

Thirty minutes later, I had parked on Colorado Avenue and was standing on Georgina’s front porch, mashing on the doorbell with my thumb and admiring the stained glass in her neighbor’s dining room window. I pressed the bell again and could hear it echo from somewhere at the back of the house. Nobody home. I checked my watch. Three o’clock. I found myself hoping Georgina was out consulting a new therapist, but she was probably at the grocery store or taking the boys to a Cub Scout meeting. I sat on the porch steps, the concrete cold as ice through my slacks, and considered my options. I could wait here
for Georgina, freezing my tush, or do a little retail therapy and get something to eat. I wasted a couple of hours at the Towson Town Center, annoying shopkeepers at the White House and Hecht’s by trying on clothes without actually buying anything, then, because Café Zen was on Belvedere only a couple of miles away, I took myself there and dawdled over a delicious veggie stir-fry. At six, I returned to Colorado Road, but before I laid so much as a toe on the porch, I knew no one was home. The curtains were still drawn, no lights shone from behind them, and Scott’s SUV wasn’t parked anywhere on the street.
Shit!
If I wanted to find out more about the group at All Hallows, I’d have to try the direct approach. It was Wednesday. In one hour it would be seven. The hell with Georgina. I’d simply join the group myself.

I remembered that All Hallows stood on the corner of West Melrose and Roland. I parked on Melrose and approached the building from the front. The double wooden doors were painted bright red. I jiggled the knob, but they were securely locked. I followed a concrete sidewalk around the side of the church to where another set of double doors led into a passageway that connected the south door of the church with the parish hall. I pulled on a brass handle and was relieved when it opened easily. Since I knew the church itself was locked, I turned right and passed through another doorway into the parish hall. It was so dark where I stood that I couldn’t even read my watch, but at the other end of the room slivers of light outlined three evenly spaced doors, all closed. I selected the one on the far left, pulled it open, and found myself in another dimly lit hallway, wondering vaguely if I hadn’t been walking around in circles. Making an educated guess, I turned left and strolled along the corridor past a number of offices with
their doors closed. From an office near the end of the corridor, however, light spilled and I could hear a radio playing softly. Civilization!

When I appeared in his doorway, the occupant looked up, startled, his eyes round and gray over the tops of his glasses. Lionel Streeting, the Senior Warden. Since I’d last seen him at that organ concert, he’d traded in his slimy silver suit for one in gray-green polyester. Still a sartorial disaster.

“May I help you?” Lionel closed the folder he was studying and stood, checking me over, taking in my gray slacks, white turtleneck, and dark blue car coat. I must have passed inspection, because he nodded almost imperceptibly.

“I’m looking for the self-help group that’s meeting here tonight,” I said.

Streeting had been standing, rigid as a telephone pole, behind his desk, but he oozed around it, stopping just in front of me. “And you are …?”

“Hannah Ives.”

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Streeting.” The hand he extended was cold and slightly damp.

“They’re in the fellowship hall in the church basement.” He touched my elbow. “Here, let me show you.”

I preceded him out the door while he held it open with the flat of a broad, hairy hand. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your work,” I apologized. “Please. I’m sure I can find it myself.”

Streeting turned out his office light and pulled his door firmly shut behind him, checking to see if it was locked. “No, it’s no trouble. No trouble at all.” He leered at me, revealing long, impossibly white teeth. “Always like to be helpful.” At the end of the hall, he flipped a light switch that illuminated a stairway. “This way.” He
bowed slightly and made a gallant sweep with his arm, indicating that I should go down ahead of him. I shuddered. Lionel gave me the willies. Particularly as I had no idea where he was taking me.

“I’m new to the group,” I said. And just in case he had mischief on his mind, I added, “They’re expecting me.”

I had reached the bottom step. Here the hallway smelled damply of cinder blocks and new paint. Marbleized tiles like black bowling balls covered the floor. Lionel did a little quick step to catch up with me. “I suppose you heard.”

“Heard what?”

“About the tragedy. Terrible. Terrible.” He wagged his head from side to side, his eyes clamped shut. “The woman who ran the group was murdered last week.”

“Really?” I stopped dead in my tracks and turned to look at him. “How perfectly awful! Is the meeting off, then?”

“Oh, no. No, no. I don’t think so. You’ll find some of the ladies already here.”

“Does the church sponsor the group?”

“We give them a place to meet, but we do the same for the Girl Scouts, Alcoholics Anonymous, and a mystery writers’ critique group, so we can’t be accused of playing favorites.” He chuckled dryly.

We were passing the church kitchen, whose stainless steel counters and appliances gleamed. I paused for a moment to consider a series of bulletin boards, where pictures of missionary couples and of members doing an inner city neighborhood cleanup were posted. Nearby, on a wooden rack, name tags of church members had been slipped into slots labeled with letters of the alphabet. In the C’s I touched my sister’s name tag.

Lionel noticed. “Our church organist,” he told me.

“Oh?” Good. He didn’t recognize me, then.

“Damn fine organist, but she plays too loudly.” He pointed to his right ear with a crooked index finger. “Used to come to these meetings regularly, but I haven’t seen her around for a while.”

“Maybe she felt she didn’t need the support anymore.”

“Maybe.”

I followed Lionel through another set of double doors into a narrow corridor lined with choir robes hanging on hooks. It opened into a brightly lit fellowship hall. Tables, their legs folded flat against their undersides, lay stacked one upon another at the far end of the room. At the other end, near a stage hung with limp, gold-trimmed maroon curtains, sat six women in folding chairs arranged in a circle. Two of the chairs were empty.

An attractive African-American woman in an electric blue business suit stood slightly apart from the others. Her eyes were swollen as if she’d been crying. I imagined she was grieving about the doctor, but she could just as easily have had a fight with her husband. Or suffered from allergies.

Lionel coughed discreetly and the chattering stopped. “Ladies!”

All seven heads swiveled in our direction. Lionel cleared his throat. “Ladies, this is Hannah Ives. She’s interested in joining your group.”

A tall woman with long, thick salt-and-pepper hair set against dark olive skin, heavily made up to mask old acne scars, rose to greet me. “Welcome, Hannah. I’m Joy Emerson and this is Toni, Claudia, Suzanne, Mindy, JoAnne, and Gwen,” she said, pointing at each of the women in turn.

I wondered if JoAnne was the J in J. S. Riggins, but nobody was offering any last names and I couldn’t very well ask.

“My friend, Georgina, told me about the group.”

“Really?” Joy extended her hand in my direction, palm up, indicating that I should take a seat. “I don’t believe she’s here tonight.”

“No,” I said simply.

I grinned and pointed at Toni. “Let’s see … that’s Toni and Claudia and Mindy—no, Gwen … Oh, Lord. I hope there won’t be a test in the morning!” I shook my head and plopped myself down into an empty chair next to Suzanne, the woman in the blue suit who was now repairing her makeup, applying glossy red lipstick to her mouth with a narrow brush.

Toni, who had been busily stuffing her purse under her chair, looked up. “It won’t take you long to get to know everyone.”

I was aware that Lionel, who had been loitering near the door to the kitchen, had finally left the room. When he was out of sight, Joy returned to her seat, sat down, and leaned forward, a hand on each knee. “I’m not a therapist, but I’ll be facilitating the group for the time being, Hannah. Georgina may have told you about our therapist …” She paused and took a deep breath. “Dr. Sturges was murdered. I still can’t believe it.”

I nodded, not looking directly at anyone. “I read about it in the paper.” To my right, JoAnne—or was it Mindy?—gulped and fumbled in her purse, finally producing a tissue with which she dabbed delicately at the corner of each eye.

Joy shook off her melancholy as if it were an old shawl and chirped, “Perhaps introductions are in order.” A
lopsided grin creased her elaborate makeup. “I’m the adult child of an alcoholic,” she confessed. “My mother.” She turned to her left. “Mindy?”

Mindy, an attractive brunette with pale, Irish skin, picked nervously at the sleeve of her sweater and said, “I’m trying to overcome my addiction to cigarettes.”

As we went around the circle, I met a drinker, a compulsive eater, a battered wife, a cutter who couldn’t control the urge to mutilate her body, and individuals in various stages of depression. As it got closer and closer to me, I started to panic. I hadn’t even decided what my problem was going to be.

“I’m Suzanne and I’m an alcoholic.” Suzanne sat directly on my right.

Fish or cut bait, Hannah! You’re up!
I sat there, tongue-tied. Fourteen eyes were focused on me. Except for the cancer, I was fairly normal. Maybe a tad on the thin side after all the weight I lost during chemo. “I’m bulimic,” I blurted.